Trump uses Sharpie to redraw weather map so that he can show that one of his false statements, a product of his profound ignorance regarding areas of knowledge with which a president should be familiar–with which he or she should become familiar as president–is not false.  Big deal, really, because it gets at how flawed a being the guy who is the nation’s leader really is, something most sane people already know.

But when, to satisfy this dangerous fool, government agencies screw with vital information and support his false claims, the danger is severe, the ability of sensible people to believe in what those agencies say undermined.  So where, then, do those who care to know the truth go.  What repository of fact is there to consult?  None!  And so those once trust worthy sources can be distrusted or trusted as much as other sources that are known to distort and lie.  NOAA and other government agencies are no better or worse than Fox News.

And with this, with fact and truth and deception and lies all being offered as possible truths, there is not truth and lies are as likely to guide decisions as the truth.

The pressure this administration is putting on government agencies to tell the public what it wants the public to believe true, no matter how false, no matter how dangerous, is great and the NOAA case shows that Trump and his people are succeeding in making agencies part of a presidential propaganda machine.  No checks and the nation is out of balance.  We are out of balance and ever closer to a devastating fall.